


in the dark of the night

by surexit



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/F, First Meetings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-28 16:36:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surexit/pseuds/surexit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy is frustrated. Sif is furious. They make a brief space for themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the dark of the night

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to listedheart for the superfast and superlovely beta.

Peggy has been bounced around between a lot of different occupations in the last year. No one really wants her, no matter what commendations she achieves on her service record - they'll write new commendations to get rid of her instead. Now that the Germans have solid intelligence on her, including the full-face photographs which have sounded the death knell for her career as an intelligence officer, it has become suddenly apparent to the army that while they thought they were creating an effective and socially acceptable spy, they have managed to train and equip a female soldier, without much consideration about what they might do with her when she no longer has a socially acceptable role to play.

Which explains why these last months, she has ended up on a tiny Scottish island, working with the RAF's meteorological section on the inexplicable, radar-disrupting weather phenomena in the area. It would be difficult for headquarters to have sent her further away than this, and difficult (although several years dealing with military bureaucracy have taught her, not impossible) for them to have found anything more boring for her to do.

At night, she walks down the single-track road to the small cottage which has been provided for her (moment of an overheard conversation, _no, we can't possibly have her in the barracks_ ) and goes to sleep under the decaying thatch, listening to corncrakes and cows and the occasional snatch of conversation as men from the barracks pass up and down the road, on their way to or back from the bar a few miles away. Sometimes she hears the high-pitched Gaelic-sprinkled voices of island women travelling back with them. _They're_ allowed in the barracks.

In the morning she walks back up the road to the airbase, and she sits in a chair and she sorts through data and restrains the urge to shoot every man who calls her 'sweetheart', because if she starts doing that then she is never, ever going to stop.

The days drone by.

Until one night, the sky is lit by something strange, and the corncrakes go silent in shock.

***

By the time Peggy is decently attired and has made her way to the base (which doesn't take that long) the sky is the endless spangled dark that it was before, and the birds are starting to voice again. The base is a hive of quiet activity, despite the constraints of blackout, and Peggy makes her way into the office. She is confronted by a lot of senior officers in the kind of controlled chaos that most military men get thrown into when things which they can't understand confront them, and one immaculate woman in armour. Peggy blinks.

She looks at the men, who have formed a loose observatory group around Captains Fitch and Rowlands. The two captains have longstanding grudges against each other, and the volume in the office is rising unpleasantly. She looks back at the woman, who is standing near the centre of the room with her chin high and her hand on her - right, her hand on her sword. Of course.

Peggy rubs her eyes, and then shrugs and makes her way across to the strange woman, skirting around the circle of maleness. It's more interesting than going back to bed. "Hello," she says to the woman, "I'm Agent Carter." The army never really got around to giving her a proper military rank - supposedly due to slow paperwork, but Peggy knows better. Knows that they can't get away with giving her anything less than Lieutenant, given her service, and that once they give her that there will be an awful lot of trouble coming their way.

"Greetings," the woman says. She's very beautiful, Peggy notices with the part of her brain that she's been trying to ignore since she came to this gossip-ridden island. Her face is sly and lively, her skin flawless, and the ferociously pulled back hair emphasises the clean lines of her throat and neck. "I am Sif Tyrsdottir." Peggy was in Scandinavia at the beginning of last year, under classified and happier circumstances, and she recognises the surname formation. Probably a spy, then, but an interesting one in a dull place.

"Good, nice to meet you," Peggy says, and holds out her hand for a brisk shake. And then, because they deserve it, she turns to the men in the room and gives her voice its most commanding possible timbre (when you have had to frequently address meetings of French resistance fighters who all seem to hate each other, this is very commanding) as she says, "Gentlemen!"

Captain Rowlands stops mid-diatribe on Fitch's ancestry. Heads swivel towards Peggy, in the same dull way, she thinks rather meanly, as the cows look slowly at her when she walks past their fields. "Gentlemen," she says again. "It is the middle of the night, and you have an unaccompanied woman in your barracks." And then she smiles at them beatifically.

Captain Fitch clears his throat. Rowlands' impassioned speech has left him rather dazed-looking, but he manages to say, "She appeared under suspicious circumstances."

"But there is still _propriety_ to think of, gentlemen."

Yes. Yes there is. She has provoked a rash of nervous blinking.

"I propose," Peggy goes on, letting her voice turn kind, "that I should escort Miss -" she leans on the 'miss', letting the word sink in "- Tyrsdottir back to my lodging. I am completely capable of keeping an eye on her, and in the morning we can reconvene under less _scandalous_ circumstances."

There is very little to say to that, because no one is going to dispute Peggy's ability to keep an eye on a single woman - they've all read her file, rather nervously - and they may be soldiers but they are, as Peggy as taken pains to remind them, rather keen on being gentlemen as well. A few minutes later, Peggy has extracted the potentially interesting Sif, with a promise to return her in the decent light of day, and has managed to discomfit almost every ranking idiot on base in one fell swoop. Given that she was asleep forty-five minutes ago, she's rather pleased with herself.

"Miss Tyrsdottir," she says briskly as they step through the wire-mesh gates, "just so we're clear, I do have a gun, and I am a very good shot."

She doesn't really expect this alone to head off any escape attempt, because if she was in Sif's position right now she would be exulting about having been removed from a room full of soldiers and placed under the care of a lone woman. Sif has no way of knowing that Peggy is also a soldier.

When she glances across, however, the other woman just looks a little confused. "Just so we're clear, my lady," she says slowly. "I have a sword. If that is information which needs exchanging. I am not entirely - where am I?"

Hmmm. "Botched parachute drop?" Peggy asks, feeling a slight touch of comradeship because that's happened to her too many times. Once is too many, but twice had really been annoying. "You've landed in Great Todday, and I can't imagine that this was where you intended to be, in that outfit."

She can't really imagine anywhere that outfit would be discreet. But certainly not Great Todday.

"No, I." Sif shakes her head and frowns. "My brother Heimdall..." She trails off, and Peggy can practically hear the cogs turning in her brain. "My brother Heimdall! The Vanir were upon us and he flung me from Asgard!" She sounds _furious_ , and she has come to a stop in the middle of the track. Peggy watches her cautiously as she flings back her head and bellows, "HEIMDALL. Heimdall, open the Bifrost to me, I would fight. HEIMDALL."

That's quite enough of that, Peggy decides. Pretended mental infirmity is not a tactic she's seen Nazi spies try before. "Miss Tyrsdottir," she says, as firmly and Englishly as she can. "Miss Tyrsdottir, please desist. We are almost to my cottage."

Sif seems not to hear her. Her shoulders are sinking, bowing inwards. "I have been exiled," she says. "Or he has died and cannot hear me. Because I would not go with the women." Her face pinches in on itself, and Peggy understands the bitterness that runs deep there, even if the grief is a little beyond her.

"I-" She tries to think how to say, _I also, I will never let them send me with the women_ , and also how to say, _it pains me that I must always go with the men if I want to remain the woman I want to be_ , but she can't. So instead she reaches for the only correct response in times of what seem to be deep crisis. "Miss Tyrsdottir, please do come along. I'll put the kettle on."

***

There is absolutely no reason to be convinced that there is something more to Sif than a Scandinavian collaborator spy. Peggy knows this, and she’s careful that she does not do anything with her suddenly-born belief that Sif is not immediately dangerous to her. But she certainly thinks it, even as she never turns her back on the woman while she maneouvres around the cramped, whitewashed kitchen.

Sif is straightbacked in the kitchen's only proper chair, sword unbuckled but laid across her lap. She doesn't seem particularly interested in Peggy, murmuring a dull, "My thanks," as the tea is placed in front of her.

"So!" Peggy says brightly, seating herself in a perch on the broad windowsill, and then runs out of things to say while admiring the arch of Sif's eyebrows. She really is the most attractive woman Peggy has seen for several months - the handful of Great Todday women run to broad, innocent faces and ruddy cheeks, and Peggy has always preferred a little edge and sophistication in her women. Broad, innocent, ruddy-cheeked men, on the other hand, rather interest her, but not here, not when everyone will know who and where and how within minutes of the act being completed. The island gossip is the most ruthlessly efficient and uncheatable intelligence gathering system Peggy has ever seen.

She knows Sif has caught her looking a moment or two later, when she sets the cup down and tilts her chin up to catch Peggy's eye. And this is interesting, because the only women, normally, who notice that another woman is speculating over them are the kind of women who might reciprocate. Other women just assume it is either mild admiration for or vicious internal criticism of their finenesses and flaws.

Peggy can't quite risk it, though, and the moment stretches, until Sif says, "Why not, in Hel's name?" and stands up abruptly. She crosses to Peggy in a step or two, and bends to kiss her. There is nothing of the slight catch of tension that Peggy is used to, where both participants wait for the other to scream blue murder and run for the nearest nunnery, only immediate slick warmth, and Peggy strains up towards Sif's mouth, tea still clutched between both hands.

She pushes Sif back after a minute or two, hand lingering over the curve of her chest, but it's through armour so it's not as interesting as it could be, and says, "I must just set my tea down." She's made up her mind already, that she deserves this, and it's been long months, and Sif is neither crazy nor a Nazi, though the last two involve some finger-crossing on Peggy's part. What she is, if she's neither crazy nor a Nazi, will have to wait for a morning that is several hours away.

She puts the tea away from her, at the far corner of the windowsill, and starts to unbutton her blouse. "You too," she says, as she sees Sif's eyes catch on her fingers. There is something tight and desperate in Sif's face, and Peggy knows it's not all, or even mostly, for her or this or anything on this earth. But she nods and shrugs and starts to remove her armour. She's as beautiful as Peggy had hoped, underneath, breasts small and pink nipples already hard. Peggy can feel her own hardening in sympathy.

She has barely a moment to take a half-naked Sif in before Sif descends on her again, lips on her neck and hand reaching between her legs, other hand braced beside Peggy on the windowsill. She hasn't managed to take her tights off completely, they're half-down her thighs and her knickers and skirt are still in place, but Sif doesn't seem to care. Her fingers push at Peggy hard through the rough fabric of her underwear while Peggy pushes the skirt further up, until it's rucked around her waist, and Peggy drops her head back and moans, long and low. Sif is biting at her collarbone, tiny stinging hurts, and the undulating pressure of her fingers is just the wrong side of enough, too blunt through her knickers to get Peggy where she needs it. "Come on, come on," Peggy mutters, forcing her bliss-stiffened fingers to move their way down, the brush of her own hands on her belly making her shiver. She reaches, and pulls her underwear out of the way, causing a catch in Sif's rhythm that makes Peggy whine in the back of her throat. But a second later Sif's fingers return, rubbing through the wetness and circling her clit with suddenly teasing lightness. "No-oo," Peggy says, aware her voice is broken.

"What is your desire?" Sif says. She's focused fully on Peggy now, in a way she wasn't before, the desolation gone from her eyes for a moment.

"Harder," Peggy says, or tries to say, but Sif chooses the moment that she begins to articulate the first syllable to press a finger into her and it degenerates into a high-pitched and quickly stifled shriek as her body winds tight and releases, spreading the beautiful lassitude through her limbs which she's missed for so long. It's not the same when it's produced by your own hands.

"Oh," Sif says, finger still inside her and watching her hungrily. "Let us do that again, my lady. And again."

Peggy finds the strength to say, "Oh God," rough and hungry, as Sif begins to kiss her way down towards where her finger is still stroking inside Peggy. It's going to be an exhausting night.

It's going to be a fantastic night.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] in the dark of the night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/773327) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




End file.
